I Survived Julyapalooza!
My friend had his annual Julyapalooza Barbecue in Brick today. This time I made it through the day without any near-death experiences!

[/musings] [permanent link]

Happy Birthday

Last night, as an end to my 30th birthday weekend, I went to see The Birthday Massacre in Teaneck. The show was at the Mexicali Live which is a rather small, intimate venue with full table service for dining, and a bar with some really good microbrews on tap.

The first act was A Verbal Equinox. I thought they were pretty good, especially considering they all seemed to be still in high school. Their set was pretty tight, with mostly original songs and a My Chemical Romance cover. Frankly, I think they did the MCR song just as well, if not better, than MCR. They definitely had a good rhythm section.

The next band, who shall remain nameless, was described by some as "Armenian Industrial." I thought the music was good, but I wished the singer would just shut up. No singing, no talking to the crowd. Just. Shut. Up. Their set would have been awesome as an instrumental.

During their set they had two "gothy cheerleaders" on stage. It turned out that one of them was my friend's niece. Kinda random.

After their set, I ran into a couple of the kids from the first band and talked to them a bit. I told them I liked what I heard and they thanked me and gave me a CD-R labeled with sharpie containing their first recorded single. Something about that is just awesome.

The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs from every album.

If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:

• Pins and Needles
• Control
• Happy Birthday
• Forever
• Burn Away
• Shallow Grave
• Always
• Weekend
• Video kid
• Blue
• Looking Glass
• Lover's End
• In the Dark
• Horror Show
• Red Stars
-- Encore --
• Sleep Walking
• Midnight

They didn't play my favorite song, "Broken," but I was not disappointed in the set at all. After they finished, Rainbow was on stage for a bit talking with people from the crowd. I told him it was a great show and asked if they'd be playing "Broken" at tonight's show with Dir En Grey. He said it wouldn't be in the set, but he loves that song and they'd rehearse it for their next tour.

A rather blurry picture of The Birthday Massacre from the show.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Happy Birthday

Last night, as an end to my 30th birthday weekend, I went to see The Birthday Massacre in Teaneck. The show was at the Mexicali Live which is a rather small, intimate venue with full table service for dining, and a bar with some really good microbrews on tap.

The first act was A Verbal Equinox. I thought they were pretty good, especially considering they all seemed to be still in high school. Their set was pretty tight, with mostly original songs and a My Chemical Romance cover. Frankly, I think they did the MCR song just as well, if not better, than MCR. They definitely had a good rhythm section.

The next band, who shall remain nameless, was described by some as "Armenian Industrial." I thought the music was good, but I wished the singer would just shut up. No singing, no talking to the crowd. Just. Shut. Up. Their set would have been awesome as an instrumental.

During their set they had two "gothy cheerleaders" on stage. It turned out that one of them was my friend's niece. Kinda random.

After their set, I ran into a couple of the kids from the first band and talked to them a bit. I told them I liked what I heard and they thanked me and gave me a CD-R labeled with sharpie containing their first recorded single. Something about that is just awesome.

The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs from every album.

If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:

• Pins and Needles
• Control
• Happy Birthday
• Forever
• Burn Away
• Shallow Grave
• Always
• Weekend
• Video kid
• Blue
• Looking Glass
• Lover's End
• In the Dark
• Horror Show
• Red Stars
-- Encore --
• Sleep Walking
• Midnight

They didn't play my favorite song, "Broken," but I was not disappointed in the set at all. After they finished, Rainbow was on stage for a bit talking with people from the crowd. I told him it was a great show and asked if they'd be playing "Broken" at tonight's show with Dir En Grey. He said it wouldn't be in the set, but he loves that song and they'd rehearse it for their next tour.

A rather blurry picture of The Birthday Massacre from the show.

[/tbm] [permanent link]

Trouble opening aterm in FreeBSD?
Here's a soltuion! https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/44941/

[/unix] [permanent link]

X11 Mouse Cursor Themes
Starting after installimg the binary nvidia drivers on both my laptop (Quadro K1100M) and my workstation (GeForce GT 630) Blackbox was defaulting to a mouse cursor that was suboptimal, a black, notched triangle.

The settings in the Xresources for the mouse cursor theme are honored by XDM at the graphical log in, but when Blackbox or Fluxbox start, the cursor would change to the black notched triangle. TWM honors the settings in Xresources, but TWM is just a little too minimalist, even for me.

But there's a simple fix!

Create a file in your home directory (if it doesn't already exist) .icons/default/index.theme. In this file, add the following lines:

[Icon Theme]
Inherits = polarblue

where polarblue is the name of the X11 mouse cursor theme you wish to use. FreeBSD installs many of the X11 cursor sets into /usr/local/lib/X11/icons/, your Unix flavor may be different. In theory, you can also install new themes of your choosing into ~/.icons/ and use those without the need for any elevated privileges.

Additionally, there's the option of creating a .Xdefaults file in the home directory and adding the line

Xcursor.theme: polarblue

Again, where polarblue is the name of theme you want to use.

[/unix] [permanent link]

Fireside Chat


Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health.

So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at Fireside that I am human and not a bot.

It was the Astonishing Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it for one of their interactive live chats sometime.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Bill Gates is Satan's Minion
Bill Gates was Satan's minion, is Satan's minion, and always will be Satan's minion.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Fireside Chat


Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health.

So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at Fireside that I am human and not a bot.

It was the Astonishing Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it for one of their interactive live chats sometime.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Races, Races, Races
I've been busy the last few weeks or so; I've done a few races.

• On October 30, I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, VA and Washington D.C.
• On November 5, I ran the Beavertown Fall Classic 5K in my hometown.
• On November 6, I ran the New York City Marathon for the second time.
• On November 19, I ran the Knickerbocker 60K Ultramarathon in Central Park.
• On December 3, I ran NJ Winter Trail Series Race #1 Half Marathon in Wayne.
• On December 10, I ran the NYRR Jingle Bell Jog in Prospect Park.
• On January 7, I ran the Walt Disney World Half Marathon, part one of Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge.
• On January 8, I ran the Walt Disney World Marathon, completing the Goofy Challenge.

In 10 weeks I ran a 5K, a 6K, two Half Marathons, three Marathons, and an Ultramarathon, plus a few training runs in there...

And last night Wii Fit called me a couch potato.

In defense of the game, I hadn't used it in 547 days, and I'm now 11 pounds heavier than when I had last used it. It has no way of knowing that the vast majority of that weight gain was lean mass. It also has no way of taking into account all that I've done outside the game.
Even with that in mind, it's still a little frustrating to be called a couch potato after running a marathon and a half last weekend.

Each of these races were pretty special. I ran MCM alongside some fairly awesome people; people who I consider to be among my closest friends. In the Beavertown 5K, I somehow managed to take 12th overall and 5th in my age group without really trying.

At NYC and then at the Knickerbocker, I ran with the friend who got me started running in the first place. I credit him with saving my life, and it was an honor and a pleasure to run with him.

The trail half was my first trail race (not counting my time on the high school cross country team) and I ran that with a friend I hadn't seen since our days on the high school track & field team (she was a runner, I was thrower). We have both run full marathons in less time than it took us to complete this half.

The Jingle Bell Jog was a fun race with bells and hot cocoa, and it was the first time I ran alongside my friend and former physics TA. And lastly, I ran the Goofy Challenge alongside another one of my close friends and training partners.

These races were a lot of fun. Some of the courses were quite amazing to see, and these races were opportunities to spend time with some pretty awesome people.

[/running] [permanent link]

Disgusted
With the Goofy Challenge just 3 days away, I should be carb-loading. And I am. And with each bite of my lunch I hate myself more. Every time I eat, I feel fat. And every time I ingest anything that isn't ultra-lean protein or high-fiber, I disgust myself. But I sit here, shoving food down my gullet.

[/musings/self] [permanent link]

Another Demo Update
Two weeks! Ha! It's been closer to two months.

A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June. The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.

So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix. This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now, I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.

Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental mix found here.

If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments and criticism.

[/album] [permanent link]